I used to work for Huawei's storage division. When the sanctions hit, the company could no longer buy hard disks from American and Japanese companies. And there weren't any Chinese manufacturers either. Flash storage however was easy to procure. So, the product roadmap was thrown away and we pivoted to All-Flash storage.
I don't know if an adversary would prefer to grab the people of TSMC or the facility, but as a defender that has been thinking about this for a long time, I would imagine that TSMC have contingency plans to get the smart people out and dynamite the facility, no? Somewhat like the story of US soldiers mopping up rocket scientists working for Germany in 1945 and getting them stateside.
granted, there is this "us vs them" mentality, but prior to the whole Xi/nationalist thing, weren't a lot of chip engineers going back and forth, employment-wise, between TSMC, SMIC, and other mainland companies?
> prior to the whole Xi/nationalist thing, weren't a lot of chip engineers going back and forth, employment-wise, between TSMC, SMIC, and other mainland companies
Yes. A free-trade agreement was being negotiated [1]. And the fraction of Taiwanese who identify has both Taiwanese and Chinese has quartered since Xi came to power [2].
Samsung is just 2 years behind TSMC, and is in much more neutral country. Even Intel which is in its worst shape in a while is 4 years behind TSMC and is catching up. I highly doubt loosing 2 years of progress is even a discussion point for the war between two countries.
War between China and Taiwan(with US as an ally) will set the world decades or even centuries behind even if nukes are not used. If nukes are used, it will set the world millenia behind.
> Is the Taiwanese government not going to evacuate TSMC's personnel outside of the country
That makes defending Taiwan less desirable strategically speaking.
> and launch some artillery on the facilities?
You just need to contaminate the facilities with impure outside air and they're most likely ruined for months if not forever; no need to mobilize precious troops to do this.
I have heard that the TSMC fab is considered a strategic asset and has demolition charges that Taiwan gov can use if required, but that was just internet scuttlebutt and cannot be considered reliable. That said, I would be very surprised if the fab didn't attract a missile strike from western interests if it did look like China was going to be able overrun Taiwan and capture the fab intact.
I would much rather be sure the equipment is destroyed beyond repair (and that ASML cannot provide replacements or repairs) than risk a contaminated fab be put back into service. I'm sure the Chinese gov would be willing to throw a lot of resources at it if it was "only" contaminated and the chance of repair existed.
> risk a contaminated fab be put back into service
You actually most likely can't afford the risk of running a contaminated fab.
You just can't get economically viable yields under contamination; if you could, why would all those fabs care about keeping a very clean environment in the first place?
Sure, I get that. I meant that China has ~1.4 billion people and one of the largest economies in the world. If they really wanted to get a contaminated fab back into operational condition they could throw effectively unlimited manpower and resources into cleaning it up.
Thus it would be better to blow the place up and not have to worry about it.
Is there any reason why HDD were sanctioned but not CPUs? Like why grant AMD and Intel exceptions? Did Huawei have some sort of super strategic use for them?
By most economists accounts, Americas sanctions hurt America's economy more than it helped it. The sanctions may have helped certain industries and areas of America by kneecapping Chinese high-tech, but it takes more than that for Republicans to start a round of sanctions and the Democrats to continue them.
There is a very blatant military interest in keeping China behind in terms of technology. People have had a very clear picture of what technology can do for a military in a conventional war since the Gulf War where the Iraqi Republican Guard, the 4th largest military in the world, was obliterated from a distance by high-tech computerised weaponry and military systems and totally demoralised.
There can be multiple motives. If both high-tech and the military want something, that makes it that much more of a political winner.
This is why I'm of a mind that decoupling/sanctions are really not the way to go. I'd say open source/open academic development benefitted both US/China more than decoupling benefits either. Yes, I know there was a lot of drum banging re "stealing tech" and "authoritarian values coming into the US" but I get the feeling that there was way more flow of western liberal and pro-democratic values into China than the other way around...
It's never been about helping America's overall economy; only about helping the biggest corporations which have immense control over beaurocrats and politicians.
Ironically enough, that's the exact same line of reasoning that can be used to explain why we don't see media reporting on lizard people running the shadow government. Lizard people run corporations and, by extension, corporate media.
Just because you might say that my theory above is superficially less plausible than yours, it doesn't change the fact that both of them have the same amount of supporting evidence.
True. But spiritually speaking, "lizard people" (which refers to the reptilian instincts of the human brains) do seem to run the governments.
The people who get to power via wrongful means have too much to lose if they lose that power (maybe their freedom or even their life) and hence the survival instinct (which is what is shared with the reptilian brain) is what primarily acts through people in power.
They show behaviors such as the following which is indicative of acting through the reptilian brain:
- fight response (eagerness of going to wars)
- territoriality (nation states fighting to expand and protect their borders)
- sexual instinct (elites connection with Epstein)
So, yeah, there may not be physical reptiles living in the Atlantic ocean ruling us, but there sure are spiritual reptiles living in the subconscious ruling us.
Waiting for final verification is the opposite of critical thinking. It's dealing solely with already established facts. That doesn't take any critical thinking. In fact, it doesn't require any independent thinking at all.
I'm not saying they have or haven't such backdoors.
Just that whether they do or do not, you'd better estimate yourself, based on motives, opportunity, history of related cases, technological knowledge, and so on, not wait to get official or third party verification on a silver platter.
When India wanted specialised secure communication equipment for confidential diplomatic communications between its government and embassies, they ordered it from a European country to avoid spying by the US. Unknown to them, the US approached the European country and convinced them to sell compromised equipment that would enable the US to spy on indian diplomatic cables. Cisco has worked with US agencies to sell compromised routers to many countries. Chinese security camera and routers have been found to have backdoors in them. That is just the minimum extent of international spying. I have no qualms in claiming that you are ignorant if you think AMD / Intel management engines (built to enable remote management) sold to specific foreign government agencies haven't been root-kitted for spying.
Yes, they both have management engines (as does every modern CPU), which is a potential risk... and AMT/DASH/IPMI is a bigger risk. However, I wasn't aware a backdoor was ever found?
They had 1.65B net income in last year, and they have to pay 0.06B every year for five years, so it's around 4% of their net income. It's not business ending or severe but it isn't exactly cheap.
Also as the article notes, future years may not be as rosy and it will not be fun having a fixed cost hanging over their head.
Indeed, and it's a fine line between "the cost of doing business" and ruining a large company over the decisions by a few people. Would probably have been better to go after the people at the top than fining the company..
No, the concept of having corporations is 100% about this since their creation. If you look into the history of corporations it's kind of the point. Not more 'you and your family will be completely ruined and destroyed' but instead 'you can lose your business' sparked a revolutionary change in business the enabled the modern world and allowed people to undertake huge products that no sane person would take a risk on if they assumed responsibility for.
> Criminal violations are not supposed to be protected by the corporate veil.
And they aren't, at least in the US. Just look at Martin Shkreli actually serving 5 years in prison for securities fraud and personally repaying ~$70mil.
P.S. none of this is related to the Daraprim controversy btw. Thought to mention because I have been seeing that misconception quite a bit online.
It's possible that the fine was already factored in the sale price. According to that other comment, Huawei had really no other choice that to buy them from an American company.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but 4% of annual income for a nonviolent, political-games type of violation seems quite high to me. Especially considering this was only one sale, and only one product, not their entire income that was involved in the violation.
The whole point of the fine is punishment. Seagate will have a stronger financial motive to comply with the law. If it's cheaper to risk getting caught and paying a small fine, there's much less incentive not to break the law.
I don't know what point you are trying to make with that $10b fine for Apple comparison. We know the number and the % of their income. That's enough without meaningless comparisons.
The comparison is far from meaningless. If penalties have no sting, they have no deterrent value. Did you object the particular mega-company comp? If so, pleas feel free to insert your own.
$10B is a lot of money, no doubt, but it only represents about a fifth of what Apple currently has in cash. How much cash does Seagate have? Probably none. So it would be more like a $60B fine for Apple.
You know all public companies disclose this quarterly right? You could just look it up instead of giving an incorrect answer. They have $766m on hand. This is less than half of what seagate has on hand.
Thanks, I just didn't see it. But then by this measure, since Apple has $165B in cash pre-debt, one would have to fine Apple roughly $64B, or about five Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers, for the metaphor to be apt, not $10B.
There is no reason to go into the comments of every post that shows a price of the fee a company paid in order to express why you think a company that is fined should be crippled because of it, the point is to deter people not to lay nuclear landmines for companies to be destroyed over. 99% of these comments are just maliciously lashing out about 'corporations' and no consideration that chomping into 5% of net profits has an effect greater than some bonus packages of the management teams (less cigars to chomp!)
Shouldn't the same logic then apply to people? Yeah, figured as much.
If you can ruin a person's entire life over a "mistake", you can definitely do the same to a company, or even better, to the decision makers at that company. Doing anything else just encourages continued bad behavior. No speculation, we have decades of observational data showing that companies and executives will do pretty much anything for a buck, legal or not.
>> There is no reason to go into the comments of every post that shows a price of the fee a company paid in order to express why you think a company that is fined should be crippled because of it, the point is to deter people not to lay nuclear landmines for companies to be destroyed over.
> Shouldn't the same logic then apply to people? Yeah, figured as much.
Kinda sorta. There's not an exact equivalence. We don't punish every crime with the death penalty. Also, there are a lot more people than there are hard disk manufactures. "Nuking" a hard disk manufacture over a violation to deter others has a lot more downsides for the national community (let's make WD a monopoly as a deterrent?) than "nuking" a person for a violation.
The idea would be not to punish the corporation itself (a nebulous concept in any case), but to punish the decision makers that made the decision to pursue illegal profits. Fire the executives and the board, as they're the ultimate decision makers, and have the entire set replaced by a team with clearer judgement of the line between right and wrong.
This would accomplish the desired intent without perturbing the number of players in the market place.
If it's costly to the corporations, don't you think the owners would do such a thing? It's not an either or situation, but hitting them at the proper level of abstraction/let the internal "market" forces play it out.
You can't make it costly enough to the corporation without incurring undue collateral damage to a whole lot of people that had nothing to do with it. The point of is to focus the cost onto the actual decision makers responsible for the poor decision making; corporation would continue to survive, without collateral damage to employees and marketplace.
It comes down to self-interest and the balance of power, not morals or human rights or any form of idealism that acts as a soft control of the masses.
Corporations are a faceless entity with tremendous power, both to harm and to benefit.
The average individual lacking comparative capital or influence has no weapon with which to fight and no gift which which to bribe.
Government, the monopolist of violence, wields its power accordingly. Why would it extinguish a benefactor when it can simply crack the whip to keep them in line and remind them of whose hand is on the whip in the first place? Whereas, the larger set of powerless individuals are handled brutally, not because it’s best but simply because it’s expedient and without consequence to the power-holder.
A secondary benefit, intentionally achieved by the most insidious of governments, is that the extinguishment of minor troublemakers removes the seeds from which a population might grow to realize their own latent power via cooperative “trouble-making”.
Government, in a democracy, is supposed to represent the choices of the people. They serve us. If they're not serving you, you are voting wrong.
If you vote for corrupt imbeciles because their sound bites align with some of your narrow interests, don't expect them stop being corrupt imbeciles when they are in power.
Great. Then I want them encouraging corporations. I don't want my power company limited to the risks that their CEO can absorb (so projects under what? 20% of the CEOs disposable wealth that the CEO will willing to risk on the total of all projects?). I want a power company that can risk creating large solar farms and absorb the lawsuits that the CEO on their own would not be willing to take on if they were bearer of so much responsibility just couldn't risk it. You are pushing for a world of all large projects being limited to those done by billionaires just like the world of peasants that existed prior to the creation of the concept of corporations. You are pushing a much worse and limited world for the little people where they can't pool their resources and do ANYTHING larger than any one individual can assume the ENTIRE risk of.
NOTE: you missed the qualifying word "illegal" in my proposal. You can continue to take all legal risks just the same as before, but all shielding disappears if/when you commit to doing illegal activities. Hold CEOs and boards directly accountable for illegal activity.
edit: went through the thread and realized I didn't make it explicit that the proposal is to go directly at executives and board only in cases of illegal activity. It was implied but not explicitly clear. Making this edit to clarify my intent.
I like the logic of that. Corporations were originally given limited liability in return for doing a public good.
If they are doing something illegal - the opposite of a public good - then they broke the deal, so those who broke the law don't get limited liability.
On a previous thread someone posted a interesting idea. Every time a company conducts criminal actions, the feds assume X percentage of undilutable ownership. This punishes the company and stakeholders (or stockholders) as it dilutes their equity and if too much illegality occurs the company changes hands (and probably gets spun out as a new public company with the proceeds going back to the public and the original investors/etc still get an acceptable punishment).
We already have this. I was in prison federal prison with some of these guys. What you want is maybe less prosecutorial discretion but mandatory sentences/etc have been ruled unconstitutional in federal law so it would be a tricky prospect when it comes to removing individualized assessments. It's easy to grab a pitchfork after reading an article but their might be realities we don't see that prosecutors (who do this for a living and really really like having scalps to hang) did.
Do they really? The evidence suggests otherwise. So we must ask, why do they not serve us?
Leading us to…
> If they're not serving you, you are voting wrong
Well sure, in a democracy, if the representatives don’t work towards the population’s interests, then the population must be “voting wrong”.[1] But that is just begging the question…
“Why are they voting wrong?”
And sure…“They are fooled.”
But, How?
“They are fools.”
But, Why?
[1] Ignoring the problem of asymmetric information. A population simply does not a have access to all the information needed to ensure they’ll be served properly. The representatives know far more about their own intentions than any set of voters ever could.
Proper education, a corner stone of democracy (sometimes forgotten? In particular in that context). Not the full story, but for sure a critical part of it.
Both address the issue of education in the context of democracy and the current economic order.
The first being a proper critique and the second being from the perspective of the elites and power-holders, particularly the Trilateral Commission, helmed by Rockefeller. And its concerns and conclusions can be interpreted as being antagonistic to the goals and interests of the populace. It’s the origin of the phrase “an excess of democracy”. An “excess” according to who? one should reasonably ask…
Edit:
I says to myself, why not submit these to HN and maybe get a little discussion going?
In my inexpert opinion these sanctions create pressure for China to enter or expand into the sanctioned markets and thereby create more competition with American companies. It seems very short sighted.
It's like dumping [0], except in reverse. Artificially increase the prices of our exports to our adversary ⇒ protect our adversary's fledgling industry from competition from us.
I'd say it's more like reverse protectionism. A protectionist demands that his country consume products made domestically.
The sanctionist demands that other countries consume their own products, or those made from a coalition of countries not bound by the sanctions.
Economists used to be mostly in agreement that protectionism is always a net bad, but in the last couple of decades have realized that carefully crafted protectionism can be used to allow domestic industries to develop to the point where they are able to compete internationally.
One kind is to pretend to be an open trading nation whilst in reality there are all kinds of "compliance requirements", backroom deals, vague red tape, impenetrable beaucracy such that it is effectively impossible for foreign entities to be successful.
Then after a few years the foreign-owned business is sold off to a local company and the conclusion is that foreigners "just dont know how to do business in that country".
If done right, you get all the benefits of protectionism with none of the retaliation in return.
I wonder if the economists talk much about this kind of protectionism.
it makes complete sense if you view the world through the lens of: 1. china is incapable of innovation and invention and 2. they only know how to steal stuff and 3. their manufacturing industry only makes cheap plastic crap.
They absolutely started by stealing things and then figuring out how to make them on their own. But that's no different than how the US built its rocket industry, or how Apple built their OS, or any number of other non-Chinese entities doing the same thing.
Let's not forget the "how it started, where it is now" meme of the whole thing
The United States has invaded more countries than China while having a significantly higher incarceration rate. If anyone is brutal and aggressive, it's the US.
China is sort of doing the same thing with its contemplation of export controls of rare earths and the like.
The British empire tried to enforce no home-grown industries in certain industries among its colonies by law and by dumping or taxes. Didn't work out so well for either the UK or the colonies. This sort of forced competition through export controls may be for the best all around in the long-term.
Lets not forget, USA became such a superpower with huge help of World War 2. With operation Tizzard. UK was basically cornered with risk of getting overrun by the Axis so they send all their scientific knowledge to the USA less they fall in the wrong hands. This opened up US to all the foundational knowledge it needed to win the war on be one of the few countries not totally reeling after the war to continue progress.
China is not a single entity. Huawei is not going to choose low quality high price local startup over suppliers with good reputation if they have that choice.
Sanction means those uncompetitive local startups don't have to compete with established players, giving them chance to catch up.
I wish more people knew or understood this. The central government, as much as it wants, doesn't have great control on the local level. It's even enshrined in a Chinese idiom: 天高皇帝遠 or "Heaven is high and the emperor is far away". Furthermore, China's model is actually quite decentralized. There's a lot of freedom at the provincial and local level -- it pretty much has to but the CCP has been able to leverage it to experiment with different ideas at different provinces.
As that article describes, Huawei is effectively employee-owned, though the legal arrangement is not straightforward (because of China's laws on stock ownership at the time Huawei was founded).
The article says that it's claimed that Huawei is... but that it's misleading (virtual shares) and that whenever ask the question dodgy answers are given.
The answers make perfect sense in the context of Chinese law.
This is how Huawei was set up decades ago. They would have had no reason to hide or obfuscate their ownership back then. They used a legal device - the union holds shares on behalf of the employees - to get around restrictions on the number of shareholders in a private company.
Meh. These probably ended up in enterprise storage appliances like OceanStor. From what I remember the software stack did a pretty reasonable job of dealing with disk failures.
Potentially, they could be responsible for the 300M.
Segate would have to prove that outside counsel failed to use that degree of skill, care, diligence, and knowledge possessed and used by a reasonable, careful, and prudent attorney acting in the same or similar circumstances.
So, just because the attorney got the wrong answer, doesn’t mean they are automatically liable.
Additionally, depending on the jurisdiction, comparative fault may be an issue. Ie, outside counsel can argue, even if we were negligent, so were you, and it’s X% your fault.
I would be really curious to read examples of such disputes. Even legal filings from both sides, evidence, outcomes, etc. Please share if you know of any!
A lot of big companies (like BigTech) usually get away with blatant violations of law or regulations for years, the process of doing something to stop them drags on forever, if it even starts... Except if China is involved. Then 18 months later the whole thing is wrapped and justice is actually served.
I'm in Germany, and you may have heard on the news that we have a lot of refugees/immigrants from places like Syria who we are trying to integrate into our society. A lot of them are very qualified. Some of them have since gotten advanced grad degrees from German universities.
And then we may not be able to hire them or have to severely restrict them at work, e.g. when we use Qualcomm chips which are under US export restrictions.
I don't have a very deep point to make, except to say that the human costs and the stings that come with the state of the world can go far indeed.
Rephrasing your statement, (current) Syrian nationals chose to go into a field (out of how many?) that they knew was greatly restricted without a change to their (current) nationality, and are then restricted. Nothing to due with punishing refugees/immigrants.
There are also Syrian nationals who worked in the field in Syria already, and this is what they know. Besides, if it was "consult the list of lucrative jobs Syrians can't work first", I don't think it would be any less frustrating for them. Do you like your job/field?
The issue is that their qualifications are not recognized in Germany, so they are not allowed to pursue their profession.
These people did not just willy nilly decide to move to Germany. They had to leave their home country because of a civil war. At least they're safe, but they're being held back by illogical bureaucratic hurdles.
Huawei is no more an arm of the CCP than any other Chinese company, and neither are they operating a "giant spy network" through their equipments. Please refrain from spreading the basic propaganda you're being fed.
Huawei does not answer to the West and has become too big in a strategic industry so the US took steps to attempt to kill it. It is simple geopolitical power struggle.
Huawei's real mistake is that they disrupt the silicon tech leadership of intel and other traditional vendors in that space, with a number of --- in hindsight ---- excellent strategic moves, for example
* they now hold a "controlling" majority of G5 mobile patents
* they are a strong and serious player in automotive
* ASIL D real time kernel for automotive functional safety
* integrated platform from microcontroller all the way to Android-alike in the UI
* this is unlike BOSCH, Continental, Renesas, Delphi/APITIV, etc, who were blocked by the traditional car vendors to create such a platform
* "Huawei aims at becoming a BOSCH" https://tcrn.ch/3v7O4z1
* serious cloud player
* serious player end to end in the mobile market (from backend via physical broadcast network to mobile phones and OS on top)
the list could go on and on
oh, and their ownership structure is spread ownership by employees. the majority shareholder is the founder with a whopping 1.9% of shares.
afaict they pay like FAANG/MAAMA/... and offer very comparable possibilities for personal development.
they are doing pretty much everything right while the traditional wealth has no control over them.
and _that_ is something "the West" fights nails and toes.
We read a lot on HN about Apple's M1 and how it was the first customer of TSMC's 5nm process. In fact, Huawei had bought the initial slot TSMC's 5nm process, and it was only the sanctions against Huawei that forced TSMC to reneg on its contracts and give them to Apple.
Most cell providers sell your location info to a third party broker to pad earnings. Then it gets resold in smaller and smaller amounts down the chain.
If your crazy ex wants to know where you were last night, they can jump in a telegram group run by someone at a PI firm reselling their access on the side and it'll cost less than your dinner did.
I like that your argument is that every business in China is government controlled. Why, yes you are correct. That doesn't negate my point.
China will collapse in a few decades due to lack of replacement population. They most certainly do "answer to the west". This is why they're being so aggressive about trying to get tech planted into western culture, and take Taiwan back, they know what's coming for them.
Maybe you ought to think a little further about why it's a power struggle?
After the bogus "Big Hack" story, Bloomberg's credibility in this subject area is in the gutter.
The article you link to is vague about what, exactly, Huawei supposedly did. If the US or Australian government had solid evidence of something like that the article claims, I have no doubt that they would be shouting it from the rooftops.
> If the US or Australian government had solid evidence of something like that the article claims, I have no doubt that they would be shouting it from the rooftops.
Huawei even let the UK secret service inspect Huawei networking gear, e.g. [1, 2, 3]. They only found badly written software, which is hardly unusual. A much more likely explanation for the US sanction on Huawei is simply anti-competitive measures. Huawei had simply outcompeted the western telecom gear providers, and they complained to their governments to ban the superior competition.
> Huawei even let the UK secret service inspect Huawei networking gear, e.g. [1, 2, 3]. They only found badly written software, which is hardly unusual.
Which, by the way, is the perfect cover for a backdoor, because it's deniable.
> A much more likely explanation for the US sanction on Huawei is simply anti-competitive measures.
No, it's 100% geopolitical maneuvering. IIRC, US companies don't even sell competing equipment in many of the relevant areas. You don't need "evidence" of a backdoor in order to distrust something.
Huawei's lead in 5G is well-documented, e.g. [1]. I left the 5G consultancy space in about 2021, but at the time Huawei was the only company that managed to put a CPU and a 5G modem on a single chip. As far as I am aware Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung and MediaTek can also do this in 2023, but came later. I'm already not sure if Intel can do this as of April 2023.
> Huawei is superior tech and yet they have horrible code
What's hilarious about this? Most large scale software has terrible parts. I worked a lot with Cisco gear after graduating from university. Our team found lots of security vulnerabilities. Still Cisco routers were very good, in comparison with what was on the market. Huawei's breakthrough was largely in signal processing.
> US did find backdoors.
The article states that those Huawei 'backdoors' are, from your article: "backdoors intended for law enforcement". Those are a legal requirement. You cannot get telecom equipment certified in the US and EU if they don't have those backdoors.
Your points (1, 2) have nothing to do with what I have written, why do you side-track the conversation?
Well documented in Wired, lol! I would settle for just one peer-reviewed article in a reputed journal. Even written by Huawei authors.
> backdoors intended for law enforcement
When did Chinese law become global law?
> Your points (1, 2) have nothing to do with what I have written, why do you side-track the conversation?
Talking of sidetracking, didn't you mention Instagram vs TikTok? Lol.
Anyways, just like your Instagram vs TikTok comment, my comments are relevant. They are about companies banning other companies with superior tech. Claims of sidetracking are usually surfaced when there is no viable defense.
Not to mention, Huawei was caught with its pants down stealing code from Cisco.
> just one peer-reviewed article in a reputed journal.
You are upping the ante! Shouldn't a good leader lead by example? Where is your verifiable evidence of Huawei backdoors? I am working and publish in computer security, I am able to verify backdoors personally. Can you point me to such code?
Anyway, in addition to user "froh"'s points in a sibling post, here are more examples of Huawei technical leadership:
(1) An important NLP benchmark where Huawei is essentially as good as Microsoft and Google.
When did US law become global law? The point is: any telecom gear provider that wants to sell telecom gear in the EU or US is required to add law enforcement backdoors.
> Huawei was caught with its pants down stealing code from Cisco.
Like most companies in developing countries, they started out making knock-off gear. Over 3 decades they went from copying other people's ideas to world leadership in 5G. Congratulations!
Interesting, thanks. I didn't realise that it was already in 2020.
Huawei announced its first SoC with integrated 5G modem, the Kirin 990 [1], in September 2019. The Kirin 990 5G was featured in Huawei's flagship smartphone, the Mate 30, which was launched in the same month. So Huawei was only 1 year ahead of Qualcomm on the consumer side.
The US is trying to avoid repeating the mistake it made with the USSR of allowing a hostile nation to buy its way to a modern industrial/technology base.
> The US is trying to avoid repeating the mistake it made with the USSR of allowing a hostile nation to buy its way to a modern industrial/technology base.
As far as I'm aware, the US didn't make that mistake with the USSR. IIRC, it was always under pretty strict export controls.
IMHO, if the US allowed to any country to "buy its way to a modern industrial/technology base" that country was China.
There's a somewhat famous (possibly apocryphal?) story about the USSR's campaign to get its hand on American minicomputers to reverse engineer. The CIA would intercept shipments they suspected were being sold to the Soviets and fill the boxes with rocks before sending them along to be picked up by KGB agents in South America.
Ultimately the Soviets did end up procuring a few western machines and reverse-engineering them. This is a look at one such machine - essentially a desktop PDP-11 used by the Soviet nuclear power industry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1EWsWxObjA
There were pdp-11s everywhere in the 1970s, and the designs were published (I have the schematics in my desk drawer here on microfiche). They were built from off the shelf TTL chips that again could be bought everywhere (things like UARTs often did use an LSI chip, bit harder to get hold of but still readily available) So it's inconceivable that a state level actor couldn't easily produce clones, even without ever having seen one! All the stories about "campaign to get its hand on American minicomputers" etc is theater.
There were pdp-11s everywhere in the 1970s, and the designs were published (I have the schematics in my desk drawer here on microfiche). They were built from off the shelf TTL chips...
> All the stories about "campaign to get its hand on American minicomputers" etc is theater.
The stories might be true, but not so much about acquiring the designs as quality implementations.
> Soviet industry was unable to mass-produce computers to acceptable quality standards[6] and locally manufactured copies of Western hardware were unreliable.[7] As personal computers spread to industries and offices in the West, the Soviet Union's technological lag increased.[8]
> ...
> Since computers were considered strategic goods by the United States, their sale by Western countries was generally not allowed without special permission.[39] As a result of the CoCom embargo, companies from Western Bloc countries could not export computers to the Soviet Union (or service them) without a special license.[84]
China is not inherently hostile to the US. They are strengthening and have more resources to assert themselves like any country would and should, which is actually what the US are hostile to because they don't want competition.
On the other hand, if the USSR's aim was world revolution then yes they were inherently hostile to the US.
The US does not, and will not allow a "near peer" nation to exist, ever. It will use all the tools at its disposal to avoid that situation from ever happening, that's one of its own very core tenets for national security
Japan, China, Brazil, etc it does not matter if it's actually aggressive against the US or not
This of course also means that China not being a democracy is just convenient to make them the 'bad guys', but is not really the issue and I expect things would be exactly the same if China was a democracy.
> This of course also means that China not being a democracy is just convenient to make them the 'bad guys', but is not really the issue and I expect things would be exactly the same if China was a democracy.
That's, frankly, nonsense.
Things most certainly would not "be exactly the same if China was a democracy" and had political values compatible with the US.
One the one hand the issues between the US and China are not about "political values", they are about geopolitical interests, you could make a list and check one by one. That wouldn't change if China was a democracy. On the other hand, the US are best 'friend', and have been best 'friend' with some of the least democratic countries on the planet.
QED.
Edit: In fact the US do not want China to become a democracy as that would actually hurt their strategy and interests against China. For instance, that would make a reunification with Taiwan more likely, which the US do not want at all.
> One the one hand the issues between the US and China are not about "political values", they are about geopolitical interests, you could make a list and check one by one. That wouldn't change if China was a democracy. On the other hand the US is best 'friend', and has been best 'friend' with some of the least democratic countries on the planet.
It's not about one or the other, it's about both (i.e. China both having the power to be geopolitical rival and having incompatible political values). If one or the other would be true, the situation would be quite different.
Also, the US hasn't been "best 'friend[s]' with some of the least democratic countries on the planet." It certainly has been willing to court them and look the other way in the context of a larger geopolitical effort, but once the political necessity stops, the "friendliness" gets cold.
> Edit: In fact the US do not want China to become a democracy as that would actually hurt their strategy and interests against China. For instance, that would make a reunification with Taiwan more likely, which the US do not want at all.
Oh come on. That's utter nonsense.
The US strategy towards China was economic liberalization would bring political liberalization. Xi has demonstrated that the Americans were fools to think that, so their strategy is changing.
Why should it matter that China and the U.S. have incompatible political values? And what does that even mean? It's not like the two systems need to interface in ways where that matters. If you're trying to negotiate a treaty it doesn't really matter how the other country's delegation got their jobs.
> Why should it matter that China and the U.S. have incompatible political values? And what does that even mean?
Because people have moral values they care a lot about, and those are frequently reflected in their political systems. I don't know so much about China in that regard, but in the West those moral values certainly tend to be conceived in universalist terms.
> It's not like the two systems need to interface in ways where that matters. If you're trying to negotiate a treaty it doesn't really matter how the other country's delegation got their jobs.
Your kind of conceiving of the "interface" as some abstract thing up in the clouds. Sure, it probably doesn't really matter so much "how the other country's delegation got their jobs," but it certainly does matter what policies their government implements or positions its pursuing. In the case of the US and China, those definitely conflict in irreconcilable ways (e.g. over the status of Taiwan, civil liberties, etc.).
This sounds like the motive for religious war. Are we not tolerant enough to let other peoples have their own political systems?
It took a couple hundred years for Europeans to stop killing each other in the wake of the Reformation. Maybe we still haven't gotten over the instinct that somewhere, someone is doing it wrong and we have to do something about it.
> This sounds like the motive for religious war. Are we not tolerant enough to let other peoples have their own political systems?
You seem to be conflating morality with religion. There's overlap, but they're not the same.
> Maybe we still haven't gotten over the instinct that somewhere, someone is doing it wrong and we have to do something about it.
OK, see about that: are you tolerant enough to let your neighbor non-consensually beat his wife for being disobedient? Rape his kids? If you feel those things are wrong, do you think that's an instinct you should "get over"?
The history of the relationship with Japan in the late 80s would show us ally or not is not relevant. Japan was constantly demonized before it’s economy collapsed after the plaza accord…
That view seems extremely inconsistent to me, and not defensible at all.
On one hand, you have an authoritarian one-party government (only one less party than the US :P), where you put trade sanctions on basically consumer goods, while you actually supply weapon systems to an ABSOLUTE MONARCHY in Saudi Arabia?!
It seems rather clear to me that "defense of democratic values" is absolutely not the primary motivation, but basically jealousy, and China IS a potential geopolitical (future?) rival, while the corrupt, murderous kleptocracts in Arabia are a convenient fuel provider and vassal.
I'm not saying US foreign policy is WRONG-- just don't lie to yourself and others about its motivations...
One of the first things Zelensky did after Russia invaded was to outlaw all other political parties.
The U.S. government is fully supportive of this one party state.
It's all realpolitik. Our leaders would never let a country's system of government override its usefulness to us. The Cold War is awash with examples of us supporting terrible dictators who aligned with us against the USSR.
> One of the first things Zelensky did after Russia invaded was to outlaw all other political parties.
That assertion appears to be an exaggeration from what I can tell. Can you back up your statement that all other parties were banned, as opposed to some?
> Late last year, Zelenskyy announced Poroshenko was being investigated for treason, and this past March, 11 political parties were suspended and any of their elected members dismissed from office for being pro-Russian. Most were fringe, but one party had nearly 10% of seats in Ukraine's Parliament.
https://www.npr.org/2022/07/08/1110577439/zelenskyy-has-cons...
Certainly banning some is starting down a path, but there is a big difference between All and Some. Particularly in the context of a country being invaded.
The consolidation and control of television outlets in Ukraine by Zelensky is also worth noting, of course.
You're right, it's not all. I must have mis-remembered.
Though I'll note that a lot of the states we consider to be "One Party" actually do allow controlled opposition parties, they just never let them gain actual power. With Ukraine banning its second largest party, Zelensky's party goes from about 40% to about 60%, and wouldn't need to form a coalition government.
> Zelensky's party goes from about 40% to about 60%, and wouldn't need to form a coalition government.
Can you cite your source for that information? I can't seem to find anything which matches it.
Based on below it appears they had a ~56% majority in the last election. Has there been a change in the composition since then?
"In the 21 July 2019 parliamentary election, Zelenskyy's political party, Servant of the People, won the first single-party majority in modern Ukrainian history in parliament, with 43 per cent of the party-list vote. His party gained 254 of the 424 seats.[113]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volodymyr_Zelenskyy
The fact that the US is not dunking on Saudi Arabia does not change the fact that the CCP is a murderous, genocidal, antidemocratic force that needs to be contained.
Whataboutism would if we were arguing about "China bad" and I pointed out "Saudis worse".
But we're not. My point is that "protecting democratic values" is quite obviously NOT the prime motivation for US foreign policy-- this can be seen VERY clearly where US interests conflict with "protection of democratic values".
The Saudis are just a very obvious recent example, but there are countless others-- like the coup against the democratically elected Iranian government in 1953, or the whole Snowden affair (spying on fully democratic allies, but also showing that even internal democratic concerns--constitutional rights + governmental agency accountability-- are secondary to national interests).
The whole Snowden thing would have been an excellent opportunity to build credibility in this regard, to reassure citizens and allies alike, by simply admitting: "We did questionable, undemocratic things, but we're gonna fix it!", start by throwing James Clapper into prison for a few years, dissolve the Guantanamo bay concentration camp, and reinforce your citizens constitutional rights to not get spied on by your own government. But alas...
You said, literally. "Whatabout Saudi Arabia." That's called whataboutism.
Also SA is not worse than China. Saudi Arabia may have some modern day slavery going on, but China is depriving over a billion of basic freedoms and currently commiting genocide. They support North Korea, thr most oppressive regime on earth. They promote in their propaganda the worst mass murderer in History by far, Mao Zedong.
But as always, there's people like you to say "but whatabout so-and-so."
I repeat: I'm NOT discussing the relative merits of the Chinese/Saudi regimes- I'm using the Saudis as a very recent example of how US foreign policy is clearly NOT primarily motivated by "spreading democratic values".
You have so far neither addressed any of my actual points nor have you tried to make arguments in favor of your view.
What are your precedents that give you such confidence that US foreign policy is primarily aimed at spreading democratic values instead of furthering US interests first and foremost?
Precedent isn't whataboutism. You cannot claim that the intentions of the US are to oppose dictatorships or whatever while also supporting saudi arabia. I mean, you can, but no amount of "whataboutism" accusations will make the claim credible. It's fine to just say that the US is doing it to counter a geopolitical rival, it requires a lot less mental gymnastics.
It's fine to criticize the Chinese government for not being democratic or for restricting freedom of speech, but it's not genocidal, and over the last several decades, it's been far less murderous and aggressive than the US government. China hasn't even fought a war in over 40 years. No amount of invocations of "whataboutism" will erase the fact that the US killed hundreds of thousands of people in an illegal war in Iraq, while China has basically kept to itself for decades.
Huh? Have you just ignored the last decade of news? China is mostly certainly genocidal. They've put Uyghurs in concentration camps and sterilized them. The question, is why are you apologizing for them and pretending this didn't happen?
It's committing genocide on the Uyghur people. Of course we don't have a lot of evidenc, you'll say. Same thing useful people likely you said in the 1930s about the Holodomor. And there wasn't much evidence back then either for the same reason: communist dictatorship doing a hard lock down on journalism, and people like you to turn a blind eye to the horror.
It's the first "genocide" in history in which nobody was killed.
The people claiming it's a "genocide" don't even claim that anyone is being killed. If you actually press them, they try to redefine the word "genocide" to mean something completely different.
Words have meaning, and a word as important as "genocide" should not be thrown around in bad faith as a polemical tool.
They're sterilizing them and putting them in camps. This is in effect killing them off for the future. Stop apologizing for China. It's weird and gross. It makes me think you have some ulterior motive here. Were you just brainwashed to support them in college or something?
> It's the first "genocide" in history in which nobody was killed
Forcible displacement of populations and remvoing children from their parents and culture is considered genocide. For an example of the latter, see Putin's recent indictment by the ICC.
Nobody in the public would consider what China is doing genocide.
The word "genocide" means mass murder of an entire ethnic group. You're using the word because you know that that's how people interpret it, and you want the shock value.
Exactly as I said, when pressed, you try to redefine the word to mean something completely different.
By the way, even the far lesser claims you're making are incorrect. The Uyghur population in Xinjiang continues to grow, life expectancy is increasing, the language not only continues to be spoken but even continues to be the primary language used to teach Uyghur children in school. There is political repression, targeted particularly at what China regards as separatism and religious extremism, but the "genocide" accusation is pure bad faith.
Oh weird... then why are there thousands of articles from the west and several NATO countries calling it genocide? It meets the definition of genocide. Are you a Chinese state actor or just a brainwashed college student?
> The fact that the US is not dunking on Saudi Arabia does not change the fact that the CCP is a murderous, genocidal, antidemocratic force that needs to be contained.
IIRC, the US did in fact "dunk" on Saudi Arabia after the Khashoggi murder, which kind of screwed them when they wanted cooperation to lower oil prices that wasn't given.
They send spies into our universities to steal research and plant communist ideas. They use TikTok as a brainwashing tool(censored in their own country), buy up US farmland, buy up buildings/property displacing US citizens, send spy balloons etc..
They are inherently hostile. It's a joke for you to say otherwise.
That does not match my understanding of the history.
A) Didn't the US prevent technology transfer to the USSR as much or more so?
B) The analyses I have seen have said that the reason the USSR fell is because it could not match the USA industrial/technology base, and specifically that in trying to keep up with US defense spending, they ended up spending 12-15% of GDP on defense (compared ~5-6% in US at the time), and that this was a big problem for them, that they were spending more than they could afford on defense.
C) At the time the USSR fell, which the US considered positive and a victory... it still didn't have a "modern industrial/technology base", did it? At that point, we started helping Russia (not the USSR) develop that, and encouraged privatization of the economy... that was done in a way to create an oligarchy... that led Russia to where it is.
i don't understand what you're talking about, a history where the US "made the mistake of allowing the USSR to buy its way to a modern industrial/technology base". By doing... what? That resulted in... what? What actions or inactions of the US or USSR are you talking about?
It's both, because both are a threat to our standard of living. This is obvious. The question for you is why you would prefer to lower our standard of living and become subservient to a communist led genocidal government? Does that sound like a good path to go down?
I don't understand what the point of sanctions are. Is Huawei going to stop existing? No. Is the US government ever going to trust Huawei? No. Might as well allow US businesses to make some money selling Huawei spinning rust platters.
> How is american governments access to other nations data fine but not the other way around?
Nothing's stopping nation-states from forking Linux-based systems and open source tools to circumvent Microsoft, Apple, Netgear, etc. There isn't enough political buy-in to wean countries off of Windows, Mac, Android, Intel, AMD etc.
German schools for a while used OpenOffice as Office 365 had too many privacy issues. But these are small-scale changes that are temporary, and don't go beyond the muncipality level [0].
So the US Government is banning US companies from selling to Huawei for US national security reasons. Those reasons can relate to potential threats rather than proven actions. There is no court of law and presumption of innocence until proven guilty in this process.
The Chinese government could absolutely ban Chinese companies from selling to companies closely affiliated with the US Government if they wanted to and I imagine there are some Chinese companies/products that are subject to export restrictions.
Various governments around the world are enforcing different import/export/data rules to protect their citizens.
These things are all 'fine' or at least understandable and well within the expected behaviour of sovereign nations.
Uhhhhh apples to oranges. The level of functionality on behalf of the government is completely different (being that Huawei is an arm of the PRC) making your comparison off base. Documented intel management engine…
Last I know, there is no tangible evidence linking documented backdoors in huawei network equipment. If my memory serves me right, huawei was ahead of others in 5G and american and other companies saw that as a threat and suddenly huawei equipment had unknown backdoors and suspicions.
I would be happy to be proved wrong but how does being funded or managed or owned by PRC influence anything unless there are actual backdoors?
Just because huawei is funded by PRC does that make them guilty?
When national security is at stake you can’t trust your literal greatest rival to build your infrastructure. I really don’t think people making arguments like this are being honest, they just can’t be.
Yeah actually, I'd rather have my government doing the backdooring than a foreign one. My interests are generally more aligned with the US government's than China's.
No one ideally, but in the real world someone is going to be. It's considered basically accepted by governments, just don't get caught.
That being said, it's interesting that a lot of the China vs US heat started ramping up right when China rounded up a bunch of CIA assets in the country. It's arguable from a game theory perspective that everyone's better off with a bunch of spying so everyone knows what's really going on in a country. Transparency is usually considered good in other areas. I can't see why that wouldn't apply here.
It's also worth pointing out that by and large, it's very likely the important programs aren't spying on day to day citizens, especially as the war on terror has faded. They're just not that important, and it's riskier. It's economic, military, and political espionage.
Every country limits trade, in general, but especially to countries that are aggressively working against their interest and trying to become a peer competitor when it comes to technology.
How does China “aggressively work” against the US? And what’s wrong with becoming a “peer competitor” when it comes to technology? Wasn’t that the essence of a free market?
Just replace technology with militar capcity, and at the end of the day, the projection of global power.
It's not really about tech, but about what such tech enables. Look at AI / LLMs, think how adversaries having those and you not having them might affect any future disinformation wars, etc
Seagate - in this article is skank on parade. I don't think lou gerstner or Berkshire Hathaway guys ever had to go around giving themselves props for honestly.
At at the same time: why in the heck didn't the the prosecutors demand all $300 million upfront? Why take installments? Hell, if Seagate can't pay put them into chapter 11/13 and get a judgement to strip assets or cash or stock until paid. Good lord!
The US' (I'm American) biggest suckers have got to be shareholders. The amount of checks that moron ceo's write on shareholder profit without being fired or facing criminal consequences while defending themselves with more shareholder cash for corporate lawyers is insane.
Folks this is why we got rid of royalty.
Seagate isn't the only one. There's bigger but we've got to start somewhere.
Corporations are out of hand. It's the little things too. Wells Fargo "helped me" by sending out my new CC number (Cc was not working) to all known corps so they could charge me. Nah, they helped themselves and certainly never got my permission.
"even as the United States made a public case about the dangers of buying from Huawei, classified documents show that the National Security Agency was creating its own back doors — directly into Huawei’s networks."
So where is the smoking gun about huawei? We hacked their servers in 2014 so where is the public evidence they're evil / in bed with the CCP?
US sanctions are funny: The prime aggressors and occupiers of this planet punishing those who are not sufficiently subservient to them.
I don't know how the guy delivering the notice to Seagate of this fine could keep a straight face.
If you’re going off the idea that the fine is based on the value of the gain, then you need to go off of the profit made (bit trickier with staff working multiple projects but hard disks aren’t 100% profit)
The amount might very well exceed the value of the gain. My presumption is that the harddisk industry is a margin business. I would be surprised if they have profits of more than 5-10% of the 1.1b.
It's a settlement. Maybe the DoC thought the fine should be $600M but they only had a 50% chance of succeeding at trial; getting a guaranteed $300M win is then rational.
> it has reached a settlement agreement with the Department that will see it pay $300 million over five years, in quarterly chunks of $15 million.
> ...Seagate persisted and between August 2020 and September 2021 sold 7.4 million hard drives to China, in 429 transactions worth a combined $1.1 billion.
Useless fine. This is a rounding error to Seagate.
If their margins are under 30ish percentage it would wipe out any profit made on the illegal activity. Personally i think its a rather fitting fine and this model should be used more often.....
Treble damages always seemed fair to me. Have an independent third party determine the profit made from illegal activity (to avoid, or at least hinder, shady accounting practices). Triple it, and that's the fine. Obviously wipes out all the profit, has a punitive aspect to it including a buffer if they successfully hide some profits, and you can spread the fine out if you want to avoid bankrupting the company.
Fox vs Dominion was not a criminal case, nor was the government involved. It was two private parties and one party (Dominion) was claiming $2 billion in damage to their business from defamation. The government doesn't do anything here other than a judge preceding over the case.
Dominion can even bring up business records, sales forecast and more to back up their damages claims. Ultimately Fox settled because they feared things from discovery going public and Dominion having a strong case against them. There was not even a judge involved in the settlement. It's the two private parties agreeing to end the lawsuit in exchange for terms, in this case payment.
Meanwhile with the Seagate case, this is in criminal territory, the government would be prosecuting the company directly but also has laws that defines the existence of fines and the size of the fines.
I understand perfectly. Defamation doesn't have to have damages to get an award, you only need to show that it occurred. Based on dominion's financials the don't appear to be impacted financially nor in the eyes of the public either.
What you're failing to understand is that things like this are very muchn out of balance. I'm not saying fox should be less, I'm saying those knowingly in violation of national security export restrictions should be punished more.
There's a big difference between "you said lies about me" and "I sold equipment to our enemies". That you missed that point is sad.
It's difficult to convincingly argue which of the two occurrences is more damaging. It is easy, however, to reduce one of those occurrences you view as less damaging into "You said lies about me", to promote your narrative.
Fox settled - it could have gone to court and Fox could have won. It's not like the government had much say in the amount which Fox settled for. Fox paying $750 million was their own decision.
Civil defamation suit vs government fine, so it's hard to compare directly. A fine would be based on some fixed wording in law, where a civil suit is open to define damages in many ways. And the leverage in the Fox lawsuit was pretty heavy, avoiding lots of testimony that wouldn't play well.
Fox also got off easy though. What Fox wanted to avoid was having their broadcasters on the stand under oath having to tell the truth and that is what they got.
I agree fox settled because they knew the odds of a jury laying the smack down was very high but Fox News settled for about 6% of its yearly revenue. Seagate got fined about 2.5% of their yearly revenue of which they get to pay of with future inflated money.
Trade sanctions are generally an extension of national security policy whereas defamation isn't and it's difficult to argue that Dominion was actually impacted financially over this. The items Seagate sold in violation represented well over 10% of their yearly revenue.
So... Fox News negotiated a good deal, Seagate was just handed an amazingly good deal. I guess because it's easier for former government people to secure Fox News positions than to get cushy no shown jobs at Seagate.
Fox negotiated with Dominion lawyers not the US govt. Former government employees sliding into positions at Fox is irrelevant to the amount they paid. Dominion is a for-profit company so obviously they wanted to wring the most amount of money they could out of Fox.
If you don't believe that the government could have put pressure on Dominion to drop or reduce the scope of their suit then you might be surprised how the government actually works and who dominion primarily works with.
They may be 10,000% corrupt, but thinking that your local county election commissioner can make Dominion do anything with regards to the Fox News lawsuit is kind of silly.
I don’t see how comparing civil and criminal enforcement here is remotely apples to apples, and it’s not clear your arguments follow one another.
If you believe that the penalty for Seagate is too low, lobby the government for stricter penalties (most politicians should be receptive, I’d have thought).
If you believe the settlement for Fox is too high, ask their lawyers why they went for it.
I'm really not sure where people are getting this entire idea that one is civil and the other is criminal. I'm guessing they're just making it up or making an assumption that is completely wrong. The fine that is being levied against Seagate is not a criminal fine it is a civil fine. Criminal proceedings would have been launched and adjudicated in court likely resulting in a jail time for people. This is very uncommon and instead the civil penalties for the infraction are what is pursued which is exactly what was done in this case.
Except for one being a defamation case and the other being an export violation case these are apples to apples comparisons. These are both civil violations and these are both negotiated deals between the parties.
Fox News managed to settle for about half of what the case was asking for which is likely very decent to deal for them as I think they would have lost big time and you never know what a jury will award in a case like this. They got a pretty safe deal although quite costly.
Seagate on the other hand was given the deal of a lifetime for their violation. If you look up the maximum penalties allowed to be sought it is twice the amount of the transaction which is the basis for the violation. Reading the article the violation is 1.1 billion dollars. So the maximum penalty should have been 2.2 billion. They were let off with a measly 300 million.
This is not about a lobbying the government for stiffer penalties, because those penalties are on the books already, this is about the government giving Seagate a sweetheart deal because people in the department of commerce are setting up future positions to work in companies like this. I would suggest you take a long hard look and you see where a bureaucrats that work for these government organizations go to once they leave these organizations.
A judge can in fact do that, by giving (to both sides) about what evidence is going to be admissible, and what lines of questioning are going to be considered in-bounds. Both sides do their pre-trial maneuvering, and then they can make an estimation of how the trial is likely to go. Then both sides have a pretty good idea what the landscape really is (and they know that the other side knows it to). Negotiation often happens at that point.
The judge didn't force the settlement - just let people on both sides figure out what the range of likely outcomes was. Then both sides chose to give up their best-case outcome in order to avoid their worst-case outcome.
The question under discussion was, could the government put pressure on Dominion to drop the suit. Well, who would put that pressure on? Not the judicial branch.
Building a case to destroy a democratically elected government vs selling something that is against sanctions.
The idea that 750m is enough to pay your blood debts for actively inciting an insurrection while knowing everything you say is false is actually the odd one out, not a corporation selling things it knowingly shouldn't.
You're believing your echo chamber hype. The only people who believed it was people who already wanted to believe it.
Because we heard 4 years of Russian collusion lies repeated almost daily. No matter how many times they were proven to be lies and the people who were predisposed to believing those lies believe them even more and the people who were not were not swayed by the lie. The issue with Dominion Fox News is exactly the same. The lies spread by Fox News were only believed by the people who already wanted to believe it.
This isn't true. I was in prison at the time and trusted that Fox wasn't totally lying and believed the election was stolen. There were almost huge riots between political persuasions and the BOP locked down all facilities (which were already under COVID lockdown, so double double lockdown). If it is all you are exposed to it very dangerously shapes what you believe independent of the narrative you want to hear. You assume they can't just blatantly lie.
Your statement in itself is a bit contradictory. You say that if it's all that you're exposed to it shapes what you believe but on the other hand you say that there was riots between a different political persuasions.
If Fox News was pushed upon the prison population with no other alternate choice for the people to get news then according to your own statement it would have shaped the narrative of all peoples in the prison thus not leading to riots. If Fox News was again the only option but some people believed and other people did not believe then it supports my position that those who were predisposed to believing the outrageousness of this claim chose to believe it while others chose not to.
Also keep in mind that while this is a particularly large and settlement because it is against a company other media outlets as of late have also settled for definition suits against individuals. All mainstream media seems to be intentionally polarizing and using lies to do it. Often times they back down quick enough from their lies to not get a lawsuit but it's the initial lie that they know that they told is the one that spread the farthest.
If you're correctly using the word facts, then they cannot be wrong. Such is the nature of a fact. If you're saying that the opinions pieces conclusion is stating a fact that there was a Russian collusion with the Trump campaign based upon the various investigative reports then I would submit that you have not read the supporting information.
Indeed of Russia has interfered in a great many elections in an attempt to influence their outcome. This was true and 2016 as it's been true for as long as Russia has been a thing and before that the USSR. This is only news to someone who is willfully ignorant of international politics and I also ask you what do you think the CIA does on a day-to-day basis?
The reports have continually found that there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Reading from the reports you can see they considered a troubling amount of connection between the two but that is the benefit of 5+ years of investigation a hindsight. The reports do not anywhere point out collusion which is an active working together of both parties. It only points out that there was external influence.
People who don't like Trump attempted to invent collusion where it didn't exist. This is no different than people who did not like Hillary Clinton who wanted to invent reasons to lock her up over an email server. Both sides showed an extreme ignorance where the facts are involved. Hence why Hillary was not charged with that crime and Trump was never charged with collusion.
> Reading from the reports you can see they considered a troubling amount of connection between the two but that is the benefit of 5+ years of investigation a hindsight
How is this not “collusion”? I didn’t follow the whole thing closely at all. This isn’t meant to be a political argument. I don’t trust either party.
Collusion; Specifically, in law, a secret understanding between two or more persons to act or proceed as if adversely or at. variance with, or in apparent defiance of, one another's rights, in order to prejudice a third person or to obtain a remedy which could not as well be obtained by open concurrence.
None of the reports found there to be actual collusion which means that both parties in this case would be Russia and the Trump campaign as a whole, or at least those directing the Trump campaign including Trump himself, would have had to be working together with them to change the election. This is what the reports could not find. They could find that Russia did exert influence into the election and against the Trump campaign and certain individuals but that does not collusion make.
Even if you take the point that there was two bad actors in the Trump campaign actively colluding with Russia That does not mean the Trump campaign as a whole was in collusion with Russia. Again the report supports this position that there was no collusion from the campaign. There was influence and manipulation but I ask you what does the CIA do on a day-to-day basis if not the same thing.
I would submit if you spent 5 years investigating any presidential campaign of the last 50 years you would find similar evidence of manipulation from the USSR or Russia because it is how the game is played. Just as the United States actively influences elections around the world to ensure outcomes are in line with what we want to see.
Because defamation is still a crime and is still actionable regardless of if anyone is actually influenced by it. All you need to show to prove defamation is that the people or entity saying it knew it was false information and it was their intent to deceive people with it. It does not require any success.
I suggest you look up the history around Hustler magazine and Jerry Falwell. This is an example where no reasonable person would believe the things hustler said about Jerry Falwell therefore there was no libel or defamation against him. Because the point isn't if someone is actually influenced it's if a reasonable person could be influenced.
In the case of Fox News it is my opinion that nobody was actually influenced but as a news reporting agency spreading known false information a reasonable person could be influenced by it. My opinion that no one actually was influenced by it is because the polarization of our media is at such an extreme that only people tune in to the media they want that supports their confirmation bias.
